Gingergargoyle's Blog

So 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is being shown this month on the OnDemand channel of our cable network.  Hubby and I had caught it earlier on TCM or was it Indi?  anyhow we turned in to it .... and I've come to conclusion that I do have a favorite scene - or at least one that I think of first when the film gets mentioned....

No its not the scene in the trial where the girl gets all out of sorts, or the scene where the old black man tells Scout to stand up because her father is passing beneath them, nor is it the fight in the woods where Boo saves their lives, not even the scene where the mad dog gets shot down...

no the scene I recall the most is the one where the mob shows up at the accuseds house and demand that Atticus come out to 'speak' to them ... and Jeb & Scout come running up refusing their father's wishes to go home (so they won't see the beating that he knows is about to come) ... and Scout starts talking to that one man - pointing out in her completely innocent way that she knows him ... reminds him of some nice thing she had done for him ... and that one single act of innocence was enough to end the entire lynch mob.

Be it that that small voice reminded them that, yes someone would recognize them and they wouldn't get away with it without hurting the children too ... or rather it was the fact that she one innocent comment just made them feel guilty about the way they were acting ... whatever the reason ... it is the most outstanding scene in the movie.

It really shows how one simple act ... no matter how small can have an effect on a situation or life.

Hubby decided to sign us up for DV-R thru the cable company ... its kind of like TiVo ... well wouldn't you know it - it comes in very handy for recording those marathons that TCM has.

Since it can hold 80 hrs in memory i won't have to worry about only having 8 hrs on a disk to record the movies I can't watch during the night ... I can fast foward thru all the filler they have between shows.

It only works on the HiDef cable box ... so even though we have a dvd-r hooked up to the regular cable box, we can't use it to save any of the movies since we can't pull any of them on that box ..... so we went out and found a nice cheap Magnavox at Target ~~ only $65!!

Of course when we got it home and tried to hook it up to the cable & HDTV we found -- it wouldn't work ... no HDMI ... so we figured, well that's okay, we'd hook it up to the analog tv so we could still use it after that blasted digital switch next month .... that's when we found out that it didn't have a tuner in it either.

Aw shucks -- we were blinded by the great price and didn't realize that it was basically a set-up that will allow us to transfer our VHS tapes (like the kids' births) over to DVDs ... of course that's a nice feature too ... the disks will last so much longer than the tapes -- in fact we have to hope that while transferring the tapes don't get eaten by the machine or broken since they are at least 10 yrs old, the oldest being over 20 yrs old now.

DVR -- its a good thing .... DVD-r, its a better thing - if it works.

It has been a long while since posting and I wanted to give the embed feature a try.

So here is a clip from archive.org ... check them out.

In  case you haven't noticed -- more and more 'modern' classics have creaped onto TCM the way it did AMC.

 start a writing campaign and ask them to keep the old films alive for the new generation.

okay its an old complaint ... but while visiting the Turner Classic Movie site I saw they are going to show both 'Coolidge High' (a movie my mother wouldn't let me watch because of the violence) and 'The Terminator'.

I thought "WHAT??? Those are Classic movies!"  and I began to think 'what is a good definition of a Classic Movie'?

My first instinct was .... well its a movie that goes back at least three generations on its basic level, so one that came out when grandparents would have seen the first run .... but then it dawned on me:

There are grandparents my age!!!!

When did I become the older generation??

yes, if my oldest child wasn't as responsible as he is I could be a grandparent -- even as cool & hip as I am.

 So what is YOUR definition of a 'Classic Movie'??  Please comment.  Please